Mount Misery: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

by Samuel Shem (Author) "In the nursing station there was pandemonium..." (more)
Key Phrases: bong bong bong bong bong, medical internship, erotic transference, Ike White, Schlomo Dove, Mary Megan (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Anyone who has read Samuel Shem's previous novel, The House of God, will be familiar with Dr. Roy Basch, the protagonist of Mount Misery. When last seen, Dr. Basch was completing a grueling residency; Mount Misery finds him beginning his psychiatric training at an upscale New England mental hospital. His introduction to the myriad forms of therapy available today--everything from Freudian psychoanalysis to psychopharmacology--provides Mr. Shem with plenty of blackly humorous grist for his mill. In this hospital, apparently, you need a score card to tell the doctors from the patients.

Shem (the pseudonym of psychiatrist and playwright Dr. Stephen Bergman) delights in broad parody. He creates, for example, characters such as Dr. Heiler who gives lectures entitled "Borderline Germans and German Borderlines," or Dr. A. K. Lowell, whose devotion to Freudian analysis is so extreme that she refuses to speak to patients at all. Though the humor can be clumsy at times, Shem makes some serious points about the perils of psychotherapy in which the therapist is not above reproach. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal
YA. Roy Basch, protagonist of House of God (Dell, 1981), has survived his internship and now begins his three-year training at the aptly named Mount Misery, a posh New England psychiatric hospital. Things get off to an ominous start when his mentor, a renowned therapist in the field of depressive disorders, kills himself. This is just the beginning of a year filled with disaster. Employing gallows humor, Basch and his fellow residents confront bureaucratic nonsense in a manner reminiscent of Richard Hooker's MASH. The tone then becomes more like that of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as patients are assaulted by the cruel words and manipulations of the powerful attendings. Shem's novel confronts some powerful themes?sexual abuse, psychosis, greed, depression, suicide?and counters them with examples of the very best the human spirit has to offer. The field of psychiatry is unflinchingly held under a microscope and its failings, limitations, and successes are relentlessly catalogued. With such ferocious intensity, this lengthy novel will not appeal to all teens, but those who persevere will find that Mount Misery's "Laws" and characters will live on in their imaginations for some time to come.?Carol DeAngelo, formerly at Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Ivy Books (November 26, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804115559
• ISBN-13: 978-0804115551
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #369,148 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing, Amusing, philosophical and thought provoking, September 9, 2003

By	"dnadavs" (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews

In sharp contrast to this books older and more famous brother "The house of God" this one is much less hilarious and much more thought provoking and disturbing. Dr Baschs catastrophic and nearly fatal first year of residency in a prestigious psychiatric institute is depicted in all its gloomy details. The characters in this book are quite extreme each in its own positive or negative way and shems witty and clever description of them (even for the better ones) is merciless. a word of warning - don't get to attached to any of the characters, Shem has a tendency to eliminate some of them in various stages of the book. I am a medical student, and I first read this book In my first year after reading the "House of God" - it was mildly amusing. However, I reread it this year (my fifth) after doing my rotation in a psychiatric hospital and this book is right on target. It made me think very hard about the patients, the doctors and all that's in between. A must book for everyone who is interested in medicine, psychiatry or just plain human nature.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A formulaic attempt at capturing the magic of the original, December 13, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Mount Misery (Hardcover)

I eagerly anticipated this sequel. Unfortunately it is merely a formulaic attempt to duplicate the original in a different setting. Roy Bash is to goes through the same ups and downs, corrupting cynical attitudes, and, finally, redemtion. The "mentor" figure is a duplicate of the HOG's "fatman". It is as if Roy didn't learn anything at the HOG, thus we are sentenced to watch him live through the exact same story again. When will the cycle end? I stopped reading this book when it became clear that it was going to harm my relationship with the original. Good-twin vs bad-twin syndrome?

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Some light and insightful moments in a book that's too long., August 23, 1998

By A Customer

Samuel Shem's book has some funny and insightful moments. Overall, however, the reader gets the point after 50-100 pages and, although there are a few surprises at the end, it plods along repeating itself for hundreds more. One wonders why it takes the supposedly bright protagonist so long to catch on to what's going on around him. Probably the biggest problem this book has is in the writing itself. If Shem's characters and situations were portrayed with more subtlety and depth (rather than as caricatures) the reader might find them more believable and interesting. Also, there's something fishy about the time frame. While there's much discussion of new medications (SRI's, for example) and managed care, there's also a heavy dose of Freudian proselytizing from some of the key characters. Somehow the talk therapy in this book sounds outdated-- like Shem took two eras in psychotherapy and smushed them together into his novel's timeframe. Overall, this book will probably be of interest to those who hang around in therapeutic settings. For the rest of us lay readers, it's a mildly interesting read for long, hot summer afternoons.